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Hurricane Predictions

The 2013 hurricane season hasn’t lived up to the dire predictions of global warming alarmists. This season had the fewest number of hurricanes since 1982.

S.S. Reuben Tipton in Edge of Typhoon. Photo by D. Dears

In fact, the first three years of this decade have been very quiet.

Even Sandy wasn’t a hurricane when its center hit New Jersey, while the 1938 storm was a category 2 hurricane when its center hit Long Island. If the 1938 hurricane had hit 60 miles to the west, the damage to New York City could have been horrendous. Even so, the 1938 hurricane flooded a Consolidated Edison plant on Manhattan. And this was before climate change became a headline grabber.

NOAA Track of Sandy. Grey Denotes Tropical Storm

The following table show the decades of greatest hurricane activity affecting the U.S. CO2 levels in the atmosphere were greater in the second half of the twentieth century, the reverse of hurricane history.

While the first decade of this century had nine storms of category 3 — 5, the first 60 years of the last century consistently had more large storms hitting the United States.

Eight of the nine storms that hit the United States in the 2000 — 2009 timeframe, occurred in just two years, 2004 and 2005. For the eight years since then, i.e., 2006 — 2013, no category 3 or larger hurricane has hit the United States. And these years were supposed to be the warmest in history.

Dr. Chris Landsea, National Hurricane Center, has noted that many hurricanes went undetected before the advent of satellites.

This is an important point, since we can now see embryonic hurricanes as they emerge from North Africa — and then track them as they cross the Atlantic, with many swerving to the North and missing the United States by a wide margin. We might never have known about these storms prior to the use of satellites unless some hapless ship got in the path of a hurricane.

Hurricane Tracks from NOAA Web Site

Hurricane Lisa in 2010, that rambled near the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa, is an example of a storm that might not have been seen without satellites.

The insurance industry is clamoring for action to stop global warming because they have suffered large losses in recent years.

However, it was the increase in coastal populations that caused the higher insurance losses. In his testimony to Congress, Professor Lomborg pointed out that “the two coastal South Florida counties, Dade and Broward, are home to more people than the number of people who lived in 1930 in all 109 counties stretching from Texas through Virginia, along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.”

We will likely experience periods of strong hurricanes in the future, but any attempt to attribute them to global warming should be looked at with a jaundiced eye.

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